Aren't Activist Judges Supposed To Be Liberal?

I just read this post over at Balkinization from about a week ago. It's interesting to see these numbers to show how what conservatives say they want and what they actually want are two different things. Consider what Bush said when nominating Roberts. He said that Roberts will not "legislate from the bench." You know, those darned activist judges who continually strike down the laws that our fair Congress passes. Yeah, the ones who get in the way of the legislature's attempts to establish our rabidly capitalistic theocracy mandated by that overwhelming majority of 51%.

So, looking at the current court, who are the activists? When a law is challenged, these percentages reflect the judges' propensity to strike down the law:

Thomas 65.63%
Kennedy 64.06%
Scalia 56.25%
Rehnquist 46.88%
O’Conner 46.77%
Souter 42.19%
Stevens 39.34%
Ginsburg 39.06%
Breyer 28.13%

So the 3 extreme right-wingers (Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia) are far more likely to usurp the power of Congress than the most liberal (Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer). I was kind of surprised to see Kennedy ahead of both Scalia and Rehnquist, but he is also fairly conservative himself.

The interesting (but obvious) observation is that this once again demonstrates that Bush is either a fool or a liar. He wants someone who won't legislate from the bench. But Scalia and Thomas are his ideal judges. Those two are more likely to strike down legislation than to defer to Congress. Which is Bush? We here at Nameless Rantings prefer to follow the esteemed example of Fox News. We report, you decide.